After listening to it a couple of more times, I love it. Some beautiful songs in there. I never was a fan of Nude in all those live versions, but the studio version is stunning. Thom's vocals are among his best work ever. I still believe that parts of it suffer from overproduction. Videotape is still a huge disappointment. The potential that this song had... It makes me sad.

1) Yes, Radiohead did this on purpose. The knew they were going to release a CD too. The higher the bitrate of the download, the fewer CDs would probably be sold.

2) The people who donated didn't know the bitrate at the time of donation. But if they were clever, or bothered thinking, they would have realized that they knew that too; that the bit rate hadn't been disclosed. Why would Radiohead hide the bit rate, unless it wasnt very impressive?

"I paid zero, nothing, nada for the album," one fan wrote on an epic Stereogum thread about the album. "Sounds like Radiohead. But 160 kbps, that's not good enough. They are actually forcing us to buy the CD when it comes out."
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So this fan wanted to download it for free but have the highest quality so they wouldn't have to ever pay for higher quality?

Sounds like the manager misspoke and in doing so misrepresented Radiohead. I don't doubt Radiohead's integrity. It's an experiment and now its flaws are exposed. Big freaking deal.

Originally posted by joyfulgirl
It's an experiment and now its flaws are exposed. Big freaking deal.

I think it's a fair viewpoint that the bitrate should have been disclosed at the time of donation. While the quality of the music is subjective, the quality of the encoding isn't. It's an objective measure.

I didn't donate anything for the exact same reason. I had no chance of knowing whether this would be released in 4 kbps or 320 kbps.

I can see this argument from both sides but logically given the amount of traffic expected on the site and the amount of free file sharing that I'm sure was anticipated after it was released, I'm actually surprised they didn't release it as 128...

I think it's a fair viewpoint that the bitrate should have been disclosed at the time of donation. While the quality of the music is subjective, the quality of the encoding isn't. It's an objective measure.

Fair enough. I'm using my iPod so I'm stuck with 128, and I look forward to blasting the CD release from my car and home stereo.

But it's hard for me to believe that there was any kind of deliberate deception on Radiohead's part. Nor do I want to have them on some morally incorruptible pedastal either. So, I don't know...

No one seemed to understand why Radiohead decided to release Rainbows at 160 kpbs, though guitarist Jonny Greenwood told Rolling Stone, "We talked about it and we just wanted to make it a bit better than iTunes, which it is, so that's kind of good enough, really. It's never going to be CD-quality, because that's what a CD does."

Oh, Jonny. Why couldn't you have made it just 32 kpbs larger? Then I wouldn't have had to read this garbage.

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That explanation didn't fly with some fans, who began speculating that the decision was made to keep the album off P2P sites or as a subtle way of making fans purchase either the discbox or the physical release of the album next year. The thought behind this theory was that if Radiohead fans were willing to split hairs over something as seemingly inconsequential as kilobits per second, then surely they wouldn't mind shelling out cash for the actual CD version of Rainbows.

Fair point, if the entire foundation of their argument (seen above) wasn't so pathetic.

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"If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing," Edge said.

Yep, that's how it tends to work.

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To many, those comments sounded strangely, well, capitalistic

Communistic would have gone over far better.

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Is this entire backlash really just glorified nitpicking

Yes.

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or do members of Radiohead Nation have a legitimate reason to think they were duped?

Not really.

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Furthermore, had the band announced the sound quality before people paid for the record — and if its managers had made the download sound like nothing more than a glorified demo a few days earlier

WTF?

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"I paid zero, nothing, nada for the album,"

............and?

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They are actually forcing us to buy the CD when it comes out.

Wah wah wee wah.

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"Do not buy the record then. Was that not the point? Don't go around complaining like they did you a disservice by making an album available," another countered. "As if you wouldn't have downloaded the leak. Would you complain if you got the album for free and actually listened to the music instead of focusing on 160 kbps? Maybe you'd actually remember what music appreciation was and be forced to buy the album based on that notion instead."

Once again...DUHHHHHHHHHH.

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what are your thoughts on this...?

It made me want to kick them all in the balls, but theirs were already long gone.